I Was Just Waving Hi!

The Triumph:  One of the little guys in my class seems to have decided that I am going to be his buddy.  Whenever he is reading, he asks me to read with him and I absolutely love it!  I love seeing how much growth he has made since the beginning of the year and thinking ahead to all of the progress that I'm sure he will make in the years to come!
Also, after I taught another new reading strategy today, a different boy comes up to me and says "I just read my first word!!!"  And he was SOOO delighted!  Warms my heart!

The Struggle:  Today as recess was ending, I was standing by the door watching the kids all run to the wall to line up.  As I am watching, I notice one of my kinder boys is flipping off someone who is on our wall.  I called him to stand by me so we could chat before he went inside.  I asked him what he was doing with his hand signals, never revealing that I know what it's called or saying the name.  He denied and continued to tell me that he was just waving at his friend.  By this time all of the kids were growing restless on the carpet and I had to let him come in the classroom and get all of the kids settled.  About 15 minutes later though, I called him to talk with me again, and again asked him if he could tell me what he was doing with his hand signals.  He looked at me and said "I wasn't fl---, I mean I was just waving hi!"  So he did know what he was doing, what it was called and probably that it was not ok to do.  I just told him that the hand signal that we were talking about was not nice and that I never wanted to see him do it.  Then he said, "I see people do it all the time where I live"  It's sad to hear and to see such a young kid doing and seeing such adult things.

The Ludicrousness:  Over the last two days we have been writing pages for a book for our teacher, Mrs. P because today was her birthday.  I asked the kids to think of things that we love about her and had them each draw a picture to go with the reasons they wanted to feature on their page.  While I was asking one boy to tell me about his picture I said "And what do you love about Mrs. P?"  He looks at me very concerned and says "I don't LOVE her, I just LIKE her!"  I just responded with " Oh, ok, what do you LIKE about her?!"
Also, two girls were trying to spell Mrs. P's name.  The girls tried their best to come up with the letter sounds that they were hearing and wrote them down.  What they came up with was "Mrs. Puss"  It still cracks me up, and sounds nothing like her name!!

What Are You Doing?!

The Triumph:  Another successful writing lesson today!  There were only a couple of students who did not have writing that they added to their books today, and one boy said to me "I need help adding words, because I'm writing books that have words now!"  I was so excited to hear him say that!  He actually had another quote during my writing to them that I wrote down on the last page of my story because I thought it was such a great quote about what writers should do.  I love the connections that kid makes!

The Struggle:  There are still a lot of not nice words circulating throughout the room.  We have been reading manners books all week and the kids are great at making connections, however, they can not make the connections from the books to themselves!

The Ludicrousness:  Today, while I was reading, I noticed a student of mine, showing his middle finger to a group of girls next to him.  I looked right at him, and with my angry voice said "What are you doing?!!!" He turned to me, still with his middle finger out, now pointing to me and he says "I got a cut on my finger, SEE!?!"  I just said, "Ohhhh... ok!" and started laughing to myself!